New Canaan Library this year added a new component—an online auction of rare books on eBay (including this first edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little Town on the Prairie,” with dust jacket—to its popular, annual book sale.
Organizers of the book sale call this online offering (http://bit.ly/1x4hSdr) a gem of a deal, as bidding starts at $500 for a book that regularly is valued with its dust jacket at $1,200 to $3,200, organizers say.
An important part of the library’s fundraising efforts, the volunteer book sale—with books, audio books and DVDs all donated by local supporters—will run in the Adrian Lamb Room 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 12 to 4 p.m. Sunday (all books are $5 per bag on Sunday and there’ll be a special sale of children’s books in the H. Pelham Gallery on the main level).
Bibliophiles can pay $15 to get into the very first two hours of the sale (9 to 11 a.m. Friday)—a period when organizer Karen Willett says 50-plus early birds, including a lot of dealers, will get in to snag great buys they can resell at a profit.
Library Director Lisa Oldham described Willett as “the volunteer who came to us last autumn to run the winter book sale and who has taken this production to new heights,” and we had a chance to put some questions to Willett about the popular book sale.
Here’s our exchange.
New Canaanite: About how many donated books, audio books and DVDs have come in for the sale, and how does that figure compare to years past?
Karen Willett: All of our books are donated by the community. As in years past, we have thousands of books in all categories. We also have hundreds of DVDs and, this year, a particularly large number of CDs. New this year – our carefully curated children’s sale is going to be held upstairs in the Gallery, just outside of the Children’s Library. Other categories include Art, Cooking, Home, Collectibles/Special Finds, Biography, History, Fiction, Business, Travel, Science, Sports, Animals, Drama and Poetry, Reference, Religion and Philosophy, and Self-Help/Family.
Three bids have already come in on this first edition, second printing of The Grapes of Wrath—part of a new component to the annual book sale at New Canaan Library, an online auction on eBay (http://bit.ly/1x4hSdr). The sale itself runs Friday through Sunday at the library.
I see there’s a $15 charge to get first crack at the sale for those opening two hours on Friday. For anyone who’s on the fence about getting in straightaway, what can you tell us about the types of books that will be on sale. How important is it for a serious book-buyer to get in right at the start—in other words, how much of a rush do you usually get in those opening hours?
There are typically 50-75 people who take numbers to get into the sale at 9. We will start handing out numbers at 8am. A lot of the early-birds are book dealers looking for items that are priced low enough that they can resell them. The dealers will buy hundreds of books in a particular category, thus taking quite a bit of that category early. So, if you’re interested in the very best deals in Art, Cooking, Children’s or Gardening, then it is definitely worth paying the early entry fee. But if you can’t make it early, don’t worry. There are still a ton of books left after the early birds leave. New this year is that we are putting many of our Collectible items in the online auction, so there is not a rush for those. However, if you love to peruse the shelves to see if we priced any high-value collectible books at $1, then come early for those also. I’m sure we did miss some!
A past New Canaan Library Book Sale. Contributed
I was checking out the eBay online auction for the sale on some collectible items, and saw that you already have a couple of bids on a first edition, second printing of “The Grapes of Wrath.” How is the online auction going, in your view? It looks like the big prize there is a rare first edition of “Little Town on the Prairie,” with an intact dust jacket. Tell us anything you can about that book—how rare is it? Did it come in as a donation?
All of the eBay Auction books are donated by the community as well. We were very excited to receive the first edition of “Little Town on the Prairie.” We believe it is quite rare—there are only two for sale online right now, both with dust jackets, ranging from $1,200 to $3,200. So, our starting bid of $500 is quite a bargain! The auction has not had much activity yet – this is our first phase and we soft-launched it, but we expect it to pick up as dealers and other book-lovers learn about the great items. We are also limiting the audience to people who can pickup the books at the library, rather than providing shipping. We may expand that for certain books in future auctions. So far we have sold 3 items – the Grapes of Wrath you mentioned, a beautiful first edition of Breakfast of Champions, and a first edition of a neat book from 1899 called The Private Stable, Its Establishment, Management and Appointments, written under the pseudonym “Jarrocks”, containing numerous old horse and buggy photographs.